Katherine Lippel

University of Ottawa · Civil Law Section

Working in the water transportation sector is hazardous. Seafaring on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River (the Seaway) on the border between Canada and the U.S. is not an exception. At the best of times seafarers are exposed to a range of occupational health and safety (OHS) hazards, some of which can be exacerbated by mobility-related constrain...

The policies and practices of workers’ compensation have barely kept pace with the changing worker and employer needs created by the growth of precarious forms of employment. This study focused on how well workers’ compensation and RTW policies in Ontario fit the needs of precariously employed workers. A critical discourse analysis guided our study...

This article reports on findings drawn from a Quebec study investigating the experiences of precariously employed or mobile workers who attempt to return to work after a work injury. It illustrates the unexpected effects of legal regulations and their associated economic incentives on the return-to-work process. Analyzing the legal context of three...

Ce chapitre aborde les grandes lignes de différents enjeux juridiques en prévention, réparation et retour au travail qui sont soulevés par la COVID-19. Nous abordons des points clefs associés à l'application de la Loi sur la santé et la sécurité du travail (LSST), la Loi sur les accidents du travail et les maladies professionnelles (LATMP) et la Ch...

This chapter explores the ways in which regulatory measures affect workplace practices that contribute to or impede the development of workplace bullying. It begins with an examination of the concept of regulation, looking at regulation by the state, as well as by non-state actors that perform a regulatory function. In the second part, to illustrat...

Malgré certains progrès, les inégalités de genre dans la reconnaissance des problèmes de santé liés au travail persistent en Europe comme en Amérique du Nord. Dans ce chapitre, après avoir fait un bilan des avancées notables réalisées ces dernières décennies, nous examinerons deux cas contemporains à partir de données québécoises (Canada) : l’expos...

This chapter explores the occupational health and safety of Canadian workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysis of information in the media shows that workers in various sectors, including health care, meat packing, warehousing, and other essential services, have contractedCOVID-19 at work. Many were denied protections required by the occupatio...

Purpose Work injury and return to work processes can have adverse effects on injured workers and their families. Family members may experience increased workloads, role reversals, dissolution of marriages or changes in relationships with children, as well as financial strain from loss of income. How these associations interact when the injured work...

Après un rappel des consignes tirés de la littérature scientifique relative à la prévention de la chronicité des incapacités développées en raison d’une lésion professionnelle, ce chapitre examine certaines forces et faiblesses du régime québécois de réparation à cet égard. Nous examinons différents éléments de la Loi sur les accidents du travail e...

This article reports on a study of occupational health and safety (OHS) challenges for temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in low- and high-skilled occupations, based on twenty-two cases drawn from a broader study in three Canadian provinces. Interviewees in construction, meat processing, hospitality, and fast food reported concerns regarding working...

Globally, employment-related geographical mobility (mobility to and within work) is a pervasive aspect of work that has potential health and safety implications. As an introduction to this special issue, this article defines the mobile workforce as those who engage in complex/extended mobility to and within work encompassing >two hours daily, less...

Within the context of this rapidly evolving legal and policy landscape, researchers of the Justice Institute of British Columbia, the University of Ottawa and the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment have carried out a scholarly and stakeholder-informed analysis of the application of workers’ compensation law and policy for P...

Seafaring involves multiple patterns of mobility. Ships are mobile workplaces that connect and disconnect from land. Many move within and between national boundaries. Maritime labor forces are recruited from multiple locations engaging in varying commutes to and from homeports—international commutes for international labor forces and internal commu...

Although much research has examined the occupational health and safety (OHS) and workers’ compensation (WC) implications of precarious employment and temporary international labor migration, little is known about the implications of diverse types of employment-related geographic mobility for regulatory effectiveness of OHS and WC. This article exam...

In this edited collection, Leslie Nichols weaves together the contributions of accomplished and diverse scholars to offer an expansive and critical analysis of women’s work in Canada. Students will use an intersectional approach to explore issues of gender, class, race, immigrant status, disability, sexual orientation, Indigeneity, age, and ethnici...

Background First‐line health care providers are the primary access point for workers' benefits. However, little is known about their impact on quality of care and return‐to‐work. Our objective was to critically compare literature on the practices of first‐line providers for workers with musculoskeletal injuries in Ontario and Quebec (Canada), Washi...

Introduction It is not known whether out‐of‐province Canadians, who travel to Alberta for work, are at increased risk of occupational injury. Methods Workers' compensation board (WCB) claims in 2013 to 2015 for those injured in Alberta were extracted by home province. Denominator data, from Statistics Canada, indicated the numbers from Alberta and...

This article reports on a study of occupational health and safety (OHS) challenges for Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) in Low- and High-Skilled occupations, based on twenty-two cases drawn from a broader study in three Canadian provinces. Interviewees in construction, meat processing, hospitality, and fast food reported concerns regarding working...

Violence against women is notoriously pervasive and has been studied at length. Surprisingly less is known about the different facets of violence to which women are exposed at work. This article presents findings from a working paper commissioned by the Gender, Equality and Diversity Branch of the International Labour Organization to provide an ove...

No-fault compensation systems designed to provide economic support to those who are injured or become ill because of their work are available in all Canadian jurisdictions. Some provinces, such as Québec, also have salary replacement support provided by public no-fault compensation systems for those injured by motor vehicle accidents or crime. Each...

This chapter explores the ways in which regulatory measures affect workplace practices that contribute to or impede the development of workplace bullying. It begins with an examination of the concept of regulation, looking at regulation by the state, as well as by non-state actors that perform a regulatory function. In the second part, to illustrat...

This paper presents results of a Canadian study looking at workers’ compensation regulatory frameworks, designed to optimise return to work outcomes, as applied to precariously employed workers. Comparing frameworks in the two Canadian provinces of Québec and Ontario we find that in both provinces the quality and nature of incentives placed on empl...

A comparative analysis of public policies on mental health at work suggests that laws to prevent occupational health problems are more likely to cover workers’ mental health when occupational injury programs include compensation for mental health problems.This chapter is divided into two sections. The first, based on data from Quebec, describes wor...

Introduction In British Columbia, Canada, women have longer work disability durations for musculoskeletal injuries than men, even after adjustment for confounders. This study investigated if different types of health care utilisation in the first four weeks of injury explain differences in disability duration. Methods Three cohorts were identified...

Ce numéro spécial de Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations présente des articles issus de recherches originales consacrées à des changements fondamentaux survenus dans le travail et les formes d’emploi, qui détériorent la santé et la sécurité des travailleuses et des travailleurs et qui creusent les inégalités face à la santé. Ce sont auta...

This special issue of Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations presents articles based on original research on fundamental changes to work and work arrangements that undermine workers’ health and safety, exacerbate health inequalities and pose major challenges to those who want to resist a 'race to the bottom' in working conditions and imagin...

This article summarises the findings of a literature review and of consultation with experts on the health of workers who simultaneously hold precarious job situations : temporary employment agency workers, small non-unionized business workers, and temporary foreign workers. We have observed that : a) it is difficult to draw a portrait of the healt...

Support for addressing violence in the world of work has been building at the international level, including within the ILO. This was highlighted at the 104th Session of the International Labour Conference in June 2015, both in the Resolution concerning the recurrent item on social protection (labour protection) as well as in the Transition from th...

Plusieurs milliers de travailleurs meurent ou sont gravement blessés au travail au Canada, souvent dans des situations où les normes prévues dans les lois sur la santé et la sécurité du travail n'ont pas été respectées. Pourtant, il est rare que les accusations en vertu du Code criminel soient portées, et les condamnations de sociétés ou de cadres...

Background This study sought to identify impacts of compensation system characteristics on doctors in Qu�ebec and Ontario. Methods (i) Legal analysis; (ii) Qualitative methods applied to documentation and individual and group interviews with doctors (34) and other system participants (31); and (iii) Inter-jurisdictional transdisciplinary analysis i...

Abstract Background Involvement in a compensation process following a motor vehicle collision is consistently associated with worse health status but the reasons underlying this are unclear. Some compensation systems are hypothesised to be more stressful than others. In particular, fault-based compensation systems are considered to be more adversar...

This article reports on the results of an empirical study of working conditions including psychological harassment (workplace bullying) in the province of Québec, Canada, the first North American jurisdiction to regulate psychological harassment in its labor legislation. All empirical data provided in this article was drawn from the Québec Survey o...

Proyecto Araucaria (the Araucaria Project) studied work-related mental health problems in Chile and regulatory and policy issues in a variety of jurisdictions, from a gender perspective. It brought together Chilean researchers from the Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (CEM, or Centre for Women’s Studies) and Canadian researchers from the Univer...

The Comparative Labor Law Dossier (CLLD) in this issue 2/2015 of IUSLabor is dedicated to Health and Safety in the Workplace. Aside from Spain, we have had the collaboration of internationally renowned academics and professionals of the following countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Uru...

Titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en droit de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, Université d'Ottawa, Faculté de droit, Section droit civil klippel@uottawa.ca *L'auteure tient à remercier les personnes qui ont contribué à la recherche et à la rédaction de cet article, soit les assistants de recherche Rita Daou et Pierre Brabant, étu...

Titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en droit de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, Université d'Ottawa, Faculté de droit, Section droit civil klippel@uottawa.ca *L'auteure tient à remercier les personnes qui ont contribué à la recherche et à la rédaction de cet article, soit les assistants de recherche Rita Daou et Pierre Brabant, étu...

Titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en droit de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, Université d'Ottawa, Faculté de droit, Section droit civil klippel@uottawa.ca *L'auteure tient à remercier les personnes qui ont contribué à la recherche et à la rédaction de cet article, soit les assistants de recherche Rita Daou et Pierre Brabant, étu...

Based on a review of Québec legislation and case law rendered by the Commission des lésions professionnelles between 1998-2014, this paper analyses the criteria applied to workers’ compensation claims for occupational cancer in Québec. It is a classic legal analysis, informed by reference to literature drawn from other disciplines. The paper report...

This article examines Québec occupational health and safety law as it is applied to violence in the workplace. The first part, grounded in literature drawn from the social and health sciences, situates physical workplace violence in the broader context of workplace violence in general. It also identifies issues of relevance for the prevention of ad...

IntroductionEmerging fields such as environmental health have been challenged, in recent years, to answer the growing methodological calls for a finer integration of sex and gender in health-related research and policy-making.Methods Through a descriptive examination of 25 peer-reviewed social science papers published between 1996 and 2011, we expl...

This article examines Quebec occupational health and safety law as it is applied to violence in the workplace. The first part, grounded in literature drawn from the social and health sciences, situates physical workplace violence in the broader context of workplace violence in general. It also identifies issues of relevance for the prevention of ad...

Ce livre présente l'analyse de l'essentiel de la jurisprudence publiée de la Commission des lésions professionnelles (CLP), ainsi que celle de la Commission d'appel en matière de lésions professionnelles (CALP) portant sur la reconnaissance des troubles musculo-squelettiques (TMS) à titre de lésions professionnelles (1985-2013). Il comprend égaleme...

This article draws on an exploratory study of the experiences of precarious status migrants in their attempts to access healthcare. We surveyed 211 men and women migrants and did 31 semi-structured follow-up interviews. For the purposes of this article, we report on the 78 respondents who were either recruited to Canada specifically as workers (tem...

Stress, suicide au travail, harcèlement, mal-être, épuisement professionnel… Les mots pour dire les maux du travail ont envahi le discours médiatique et politique, mais aussi la vie quotidienne des organisations publiques et privées. Pourtant, derrière chacun de ces mots d’allure parfois simple se cachent des partis pris théoriques qui gênent la bo...

The aim of this study was to analyze the temporal dimension of seasonal work and to identify determinants for the sustainable prevention of musculoskeletal disorders. An ergonomic work activity study with a gender-sensitive approach was conducted. Sixteen female seafood-processing workers were monitored for two consecutive work seasons using a rang...

Objectives: We examined underestimation of nontraumatic work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) stemming from underreporting to workers' compensation (WC). Methods: In data from the 2007 to 2008 Québec Survey on Working and Employment Conditions and Occupational Health and Safety we estimated, among nonmanagement salaried employees (NMSEs...

Résumé Cet article présente les résultats de trois études démontrant comment une législation qui est en apparence neutre peut avoir des effets discriminatoires. Trois aspects de la législation québécoise en matière d'indemnisation des lésions professionnelles ont été examinés afin de déterminer si leur application aux travailleuses était équitable....

The Westray +20 conference held at the University of Ottawa brought together academics from a variety of disciplines and jurisdictions, workplace parties, prosecutors, law enforcement specialists, policy-makers and politicians. In this synthesis, we refer to the material presented during the symposium and the ensuing discussions, as well as the pap...

This special issue of Policy and Practice in Health and Safety stems from a symposium held at the University of Ottawa, Canada, on 24–25 October 2012 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Westray mine disaster. It brings together papers that focus on trends in corporate criminal liability in a variety of jurisdictions. In this introduction we provide...

La loi québécoise sur la santé et la sécurité du travail (LSST) a été adoptée en 1979. Or la réglementation concernant ses quatre mécanismes clés (programme de prévention, programme de santé, comité de santé et de sécurité et représentant à la prévention) n’a toujours pas été étendue à tous les secteurs d’activité économique, contrairement à ce qui...

More than thirty years after the adoption of the Quebec Act respecting occupational health and safety (AROHS), the regulations respecting the prevention programme (PP), the health programme specific to the establishment, joint OHS committees (JOHSC) and workers' safety representatives (WSR) have not yet been implemented in all occupational sectors,...

Purpose: Social service programmes that offer consumer choices are intended to guide service efficiency and customer satisfaction. However, little is known about how social service consumers actually make choices and how providers deliver such services. This article details the practical implementation of consumer choice in a Canadian workers' com...

This chapter examines eight disability insurance systems, four cause-based systems, and four disability-based systems, in order to draw attention to the importance of system rules as contextual factors in the return-to-work process affecting people with work disability. Part 1 looks at workers’ compensation, no-fault automobile insurance, crime vic...

The Invisible that hurts Born from preoccupations of equality and trade union demands in the 1970s, partnerships between universities and trade unions led to training and research on the health of women workers in Quebec. Various themes emerged, including the recognition of particularly difficult and demanding tasks mostly performed by women, conci...

Many studies have emphasized the importance of medical, insurance, and workplace systems treating individuals fairly in work disability prevention (WDP) and return-to-work (RTW). However, ethical theories and perspectives from these different systems are rarely discussed in relation to each other, even though in practice these systems constantly in...

Plus de trente ans apres l’adoption de la loi quebecoise sur la sante et la securite du travail (LSST), la reglementation concernant le programme de prevention (PP), le programme de sante (PSSE), le comite de sante et de securite (CSS) et le representant a la prevention (RP) n’a pas ete etendue a tous les secteurs d’activite, tel que prevu, et les...

Workers' compensation systems are among the most generous disability insurance systems in North America, although they are also known to be potentially adversarial and may have iatrogenic effects on claimants. This article examines issues to be considered to ensure fair compensation provided in a way that respects the dignity of workers. An overvie...

By putting a price on workplace health and linking this to costs incurred in individual businesses, experience-rating rules encourage employer ‘gaming’ — cost-reduction attempts that do not necessarily increase workplace safety. We argue that experience-rating rules, together with the rise of non-standard employment arrangements, have fostered the...

This paper examines the effectiveness of occupational safety and health and workers’ compensation legislation in Ontario and Quebec when temporary employment agencies (TEAs) are involved in the employment relationship. Relying on a comparative approach using classic legal analysis and interview data, the paper identifies specific mechanisms by whic...

Au Quebec, des donnees specifiques concernant les conditions d’emploi, de travail et de remuneration des hommes et des femmes sont publiees regulierement. Depuis peu, des donnees ventilees selon le sexe commencent a alimenter les efforts de prevention en sante au travail. Malgre ces progres, certains defis techniques, ideologiques et politiques dem...

In recent years, a focus on workers' ability, rather than impairment, has guided disability management services. However, a challenge with the notion of 'ability' is identification of the border between ability and inability. This article considers this gray zone of disability management in the case of a workers' compensation vocational retraining...

Ce rapport présente les premiers résultats de l’Enquête québécoise sur des conditions de travail, d’emploi et de santé et sécurité du travail (EQCOTESST) réalisée conjointement par l’IRSST, l’INSPQ et l’ISQ, avec la collaboration de la CNT et du MTQ. Cette étude vise à produire une meilleure connaissance des conditions de travail, d’emploi et de sa...

This article introduces a special issue that brings together eight contributions from legal scholars and specialists in workplace bullying from four continents, who report on the state of the law governing a specific form of workplace abuse alternatively described as workplace bullying, psychological harassment, moral harassment, victimization or m...